As part of a merchandising gimmick, the Toronto Raptors wore a shamrock on their warm-up jerseys Sunday - an image undeniably synonymous with the Boston Celtics. Many were not amused.

For a minute yesterday, fans at the Air Canada Centre might have figured they were the beneficiaries of some glorious mistake.

They'd come to see the boring old Raptors against the blasé Pacers and yet – wonder of wonders! – there, running pre-game layups on the Bay St. hardwood were the Boston Celtics, the tradition-soaked defending champions in their shamrock-emblazoned warm-up jerseys.

Talk about the luck of the Irish.

Actually, the Celtics were not in the building. It was the Raptors wearing shamrock-emblazoned warm-up jerseys as part of an NBA merchandising gimmick. Seems the league got tired of watching beer companies and folks who make green food colouring make all the profit on St. Patrick's Day.

So it has been a few years now that a handful of teams have been wearing special-edition green gear in games leading up to March17. Nobody in Raptorland registered a word of public complaint until yesterday, when the shamrock, an image undeniably synonymous with the Celtics, was unveiled.

After the Raptors won their first game in eight tries, 110-87, you would have been excused for checking that three-leaf clover for an extra appendage. But Toronto hoopsters who care about little things like team identity and taking pride in the uniform – trivial stuff in this everything-for-a-dollar era – were not exactly amused.

"I've already registered my complaint," Anthony Parker said.

Said Shawn Marion, in his mock PA announcer's voice: "The Toronto Celtics!"

Chris Bosh shook his head at the shamrock, which will be worn again tonight in Charlotte, N.C.

"Wackness," said Bosh.

A few Raptor players weren't the only ones ticked off. The Boston Globe reported that the L.A. Lakers were "quietly not in favour" of the league selling green Lakers' T-shirts with a small shamrock on the sleeve. One assumes the Lakers would have been loudly not in favour if they'd been roped into wearing warm-up tops bearing the logo of their historic rivals. A self-respecting team, one that considers the Celtics a hated competitor and not a corporate partner, might have even refused to wear them.

Give Parker credit: He wore his regular red warm-up jersey to get loose for the second half. And though he wouldn't cop to corporate disobedience, he said: "It was a little odd wearing somebody else's logo on my shirt."

GM Bryan Colangelo said it was "awkward" to see his team decked in a Celtics identifier. And though he pointed out that the St. Patrick's Day merchandising was an initiative of the league office, he also acknowledged the team "bought in" to the plan.

Was it much ado about nothing? This was the view put forth by the Raptors' lone Irishman, Patrick O'Bryant.

Yes, we know, O'Bryant appears as Irish as, say, Shaquille O'Neal. But the new world's melting pot produces no end of zig-zag lineages, so follow the bloodline: O'Bryant's mother, Kim Collins, is a Caucasian descendant of Irish immigrants. His father, Patrick O'Bryant, isn't Irish – he is an African-American who just happened to hand down a name worthy of a Dublin address.

"Everybody's saying it's the Celtics logo. It's just a clover, a symbol of Ireland," said O'Bryant. "It would be the same if they had Prehistoric Day and everybody in the NBA had a dinosaur on their jerseys."

Just when fans of the team thought they were out from under the laughingstock that was the team's original uniforms – those chock-with-purple, cartoon-dinosaur monstrosities – Toronto's NBA punching bags made themselves the butt of another sartorial punchline.

Said Jason Kapono, laughing at the absurdity of it all: "Shamrocks and shenanigans. ... All we need now is a couple of pints of Guinness in the water bottles. Just don't let the fans know."

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